Thursday, January 19, 2012

Human Rights Watch is out with a damning report today
accusing the Ethiopian government of forcing its own citizens off of their land
so that the plots can then be leased to foreign farming interests.According to Human Rights Watch, as reported
by Reuters, nearly 70,000 Ethiopians have so far been driven from their land,
though as many as 1.5 million could eventually be displaced.The land is being leased to foreign
corporations, primarily firms from China and states in the Persian Gulf, who
then export the foodstuffs grown in Ethiopia.So far the Ethiopian government has leased an area approximately the
size of the nation of Belgium to foreign companies.

Not surprisingly, Ethiopian officials dispute the HRW
report, saying that the relocations are in fact part of a national
“villagisation” program aimed at moving people from sparsely-populated regions
of marginal farmlands to establish villages in more fertile parts of the
nation.The Ethiopian government also
defends the policy of leasing land to foreign farmers, saying that it is meant
to be a kind of technology transfer arrangement, where Ethiopia can learn
modern, more-efficient farming techniques.Of course the mass relocation begs the question of why foreign firms
would be willing to lease what Ethiopia is describing as “marginal” farmland in
the first place.

Such lease agreements aren't unique to Ethiopia though,
other African nations have been leasing large swaths of their own lands to
foreign farming concerns, chiefly from China, which has been investing heavily
in Africa in recent years.While African
nations were originally attracted to China's “no-strings-attached” approach to
foreign investment – as opposed to investment from Western nations, which
increasingly is tied to political reform and good-governance efforts – a slow
change has been taking place.Some
African nations are growing unhappy with the Chinese approach, where they not
only underwrite a major infrastructure project, but also import much of the
labor from China as well – African governments say that this prevents the type
of technology transfer that Ethiopia is touting from occurring.One sign of this changing attitude came last
year when challenger Michael Sata won Zambia's presidential election by running
on an anti-China platform.

Mission Statement

Why A World View? Because I was frustrated by the lack of international news coverage in the American press. Sadly, foreign events usually only make the news when there’s a war or natural disaster someplace. But the world is more interconnected than ever, what happens on the other side of the globe can have a direct affect on your life. So I started this site to cover some of these stories missed by the mainstream media, and to provide analysis and context to others. And my goal is to do it in a way that you don’t feel like you need a PhD degree to understand what’s going on.